Being the Best Welcoming Pony you can be!

[NavelColt 22,876]

My Favourite Mane 6 Pony

rainbow-dash

How did you find MLP Forums?

Horses!

How you became a fan of My Little Pony

Ways!

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It's your friendly neighborhood CD here, doing staff things from beyond the grave when he shouldn't be. 

But that's okay, SCS reminded me of this topic I made and was going to post, but ended up not for reasons.

This topic is a guided explanation to how our forum does welcome topics; their importance, and our approach to them.

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Sometimes we all just need to be shown a little bit of kindness~

In my own journey across message boards from the Sonic fandom to this one, introductory posts are often overlooked by forum members as a whole; while some of the regulars maintain a strong presence with them, many people cater to being lazy and just don't bother with them. This is, truly, a very sad thing, Batman. Through Q&A, feedback comments and even simple observation, it's quite easy to see that new members whose introduction topics receive more welcoming replies than fewer, are far more likely to give this strange new land of pony a chance to grow on them. Simply put, the more friendly replies per welcoming topic, the more regulars a forum gains.

But CD, how does one go about this art of welcoming pastel colored horses to Ponyville?

There are generally two approaches to welcoming new members, who post themselves to the forum in hopes of making friends and partying it up. Individualized posts, and copy paste posts. Some members will regularly patrol the Welcoming Plaza here and there, even follow it, and post individualized intros, completely unique from one another. Still others will create detailed, often informative intro responses that they'll post from one topic to another. Both of these styles are accepted, because in the ideal world, an active welcome section comes from a combination of both of these styles. Sincerity and uniqueness from individualized posts is ideal, and so too is the informative, helpful and often funny intros that one can take their time in drafting, and then sending out to new members like little mail messages. Not unlike Derpy, herself.

What's up with copy paste posts, CD? How can I make them worthwhile?

If one is to take the copy-paste approach, their introduction text should be worth its' weight, as such. In other words, a short, one-sentence 'Hai, welcome to the forums, have fun :)' with no real care, information or overall effort is not what one should be looking to make. But at the same time, there's no step-by-step guide to follow on how make an effective introduction reply post. Uniqueness and creativity has to come from you!

Here are some examples of past replies that found action and appreciation in many an introduction topic:

 

 

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Hey there MuniMoose!

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The Moderating Team

We have a very lively section for roleplaying! But you need at least five posts outside Welcome Plaza and Cloudsdale Colosseum to participate.

You might want to see this MLP Forums Posting Guide and Minimum post lengths (only 100 characters, no worries!)

And please abide by these rules, they were made to keep this place in check

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Any other question? Feel free to PM a moderator or make a thread in Site Question + Feedback!

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Hey there! Welcome to MLP Forums! We're a big brony forum with a lot to talk about and a lot of fun people to chat with! If you ever want someone to talk with, I'm always avaliable I hope you enjoy yourself and have a great time!

 

The beauty is, these posts can be edited as well to create wondeful responses that are both helpful, informative, as well as sincere and unique to that new pony

But won't copy paste posts unfairly bump post count?

Posts no longer count in the Welcoming Plaza, as they once did :3 In efforts to improve the user experience, transitioning to this new method of removing post count and promoting the synchronized use of unique and pre-made posts is the staff's most modern plan to keep the welcoming plaza as efficient as possible. We want as many new ponies to recieve as many friendly welcomes as possible, so that their first impressions of our community are sure to be positive ones!

Our community is a living organism, as all communities online or offline are. Introductions, that first step of coming to a strange new place and not knowing anyone, is a crucial and often short time for new members to recieve a positive outlook on the site. Having plenty of people willing to give them a friendly greeting, and possibly even give them helpful information and carry on a lasting conversation, is a vital thing for a forum community to possess, especially on a scale as large as ours.